Now and in the Hour of Our Death (58 page)

“Right,” said Buchan. He sidled across the floor of the upstairs bedroom and peered through a gap in the lace curtains. To his right, he could see the hill of the A5 as it came down into Strabane. Ahead, the police barracks squatted, grey and sullen behind its high wire fence. The loopholed, cast-iron shutters were open, but he knew there were constables behind each set ready to slam them shut.

He couldn't see where the two minor roads joined the T-junction but knew squads like his were in position at both corners. Beneath him, the street was empty of the cars that would normally be parked there on a Saturday morning. The police had put up
NO PARKING
and
MEN AT WORK
signs from one end of the barracks to the other. The reason, ostensibly, was a trench dug by a gang of council workmen down there, who were busily doing nothing much but leaning on their shovels. He smiled. They were part of the SAS contingent flown in from Herefordshire. He hoped for their sakes they'd made the trench deep enough to provide blast shelter.

There were several pedestrians, mostly women in headscarves and plastic hair curlers, shopping bags on their arms. Three nuns in their black-and-white habits walked slowly toward the chapel he knew was at the far end of the street. From where he stood, they looked like penguins.

He had to hand it to whoever was in charge. Buchan's officer had told him that every effort was to be made to protect civilians. Police foot patrols would be handy to hustle the shoppers to safety and the
NO PARKING
was a grand idea. It kept cars and their occupants off the streets, and—he glanced down at his two-man general-purpose machine-gun squad—it gave his men a clear field of fire over the kill zone.

“Right, lads,” he said, “take up your positions.” He knelt at the window beside the GPMG team and rested his Heckler and Koch on the sill. The house they had occupied on Thursday night, much to the disgust of the owners who were being held in a back bedroom so no word of the ambush could leak out, was on the street corner. Two more SAS troopers, M16s ready, knelt at the side window overlooking the hill. “Remember, it's a red tractor and a black station wagon, registrations…”

“HKM 561 and LKM 136,” five voices chanted in unison.

“Good.” Sergeant Buchan decided he'd not have time to go for a pee. He wondered why he always wanted one just before the action started. It was to be expected, just like the way his mouth went dry and his palms started to sweat.

“Hold your fire 'til I give the word,” he said.

“Right, Sarge.”

They were a bunch of good lads, he thought. They bloody well ought to be, the way SAS troopers were selected and trained. No elite troops anywhere in the world like them. He tried to relax. Nothing to worry about. As far as Sergeant Buchan could tell, everything was ready.

*   *   *

“So, is everybody ready?” Eamon asked from the back of the station wagon parked behind the tractor at the top of the hill above Strabane. McGuinness was in the driver's seat. Cal had climbed down from the parked tractor and sat in the passenger's seat with his knapsack in his lap. Erin sat in the back beside Eamon and felt the warmth of his thigh pressed against hers.

“You were right, Eamon, to drive down into Strabane first and then come back up here,” she said. “A couple of peelers escorted by the odd soldier and that's about it.”

Eamon squeezed her hand. “It's handy about the road works. There'll be less traffic to get in our way. It was nice of the road menders to leave those metal sheets across the trench as a bridge so the peelers can drive into the barracks. Cal'll get across like a whippet.”

“Can Brendan get parked where he should?” she asked.

“No problems,” came from the driver's seat.

“I'm off,” Cal said, opening his door. “I'll watch for your hanky, Erin.” He leaned into the back and pecked her cheek. “See you in fifteen, twenty minutes.” She felt him squeeze her shoulder, saw him look into her eyes. “Be careful,” he said.

“And you look after yourself, too, Cal.” She watched as he climbed into the tractor's cab. He had the worst job, the riskiest, and she couldn't help worrying about him. But he'd be all right. Of course he would.

She shook her head. Dear Cal. The door he'd never got round to fixing had stuck this morning before she'd closed it. It would be someone else's problem now. She'd never be seeing it again, or the churchyard at Ballydornan they'd driven past on their way here. Erin's eyes narrowed. Fiach was the last O'Byrne they'd leave in Ireland. As long as she and Cal and Eamon—she leaned across to kiss Eamon—had just a tiny bit of luck this morning.

“If you two've finished?” McGuinness said from the front.

“Go ahead, Brendan,” Eamon said. “Let's get moving.”

*   *   *

Erin was half-roasted in the anorak, but it hid the ArmaLite. She stood at the corner of the hill road, pretended to look in a shop window, and saw to her left that Eamon was in position. Brendan had the black car parked where it should be. She pulled out her hanky.

She saw the cloud of blue smoke from the tractor's exhaust. The front bucket was lowered, and Cal, knapsack in hand, bent over the sacks. He'd be setting the fuses. Ten more minutes. She stared ahead at the bulk of the barracks. Ten more minutes, and that monstrosity, that bastion of British rule, fortified like the old motte and bailey castles that the Normans had built eight centuries before to keep the Irish subdued, would be like one of the old ruins, just a few stones standing. One day, the bloody Brits would get the message. One day.

She watched the tractor rattle down the hill toward her, bucket raised as a charging elephant held high its trunk. Cal was picking up speed, and the fence was straight ahead. He trundled past her, and she cheered him on.

She heard a series of clangs from inside the compound and saw the dark iron shutters being slammed over the windows. Someone was wide awake in there. She fumbled under her anorak.

In seconds, Cal would be across the rusty metal plates, through the fence, and out of the cab, but if the peelers who'd closed the shutters were alert, he might need covering fire before he could get to her.

The sound of heavy machine-gun fire coming from above shattered the morning, racketing on in harsh bursts of four shots. Lighter automatic weapons chattered a horrid staccato above the barking of the bigger weapon. She glanced past the tractor and saw lights winking from the loopholes in the shutters. A stray round from the barracks hit the bricks above her head and screeched off along the street behind her.

Erin stared upward, her gaze following a stream of tracer bullets as they hosed from an upstairs window and across the tractor's cab. The fire from the windows of the barracks seemed heavier. The street and the compound were laced with a stitching of lead.

“Cal,” she screamed, hauling out her weapon, unfolding it in one deft movement. She slid behind the street corner, slammed the ArmaLite against her shoulder, and started firing up at the window above. Bullets from the barracks ricocheted from the bricks.

She felt a presence beside her. What the hell was Eamon doing there? He was meant to be providing covering fire, and why wasn't McGuinness firing?

The tractor had slewed sideways and stopped outside the wire. A row of circular holes, silver-rimmed against the red paint, ran diagonally across the cab door. She could see Cal, slumped in the cab. He was moving.

“Cal's all right,” she yelled. “I'm going for him.”

“Stay where you are.” Eamon ran bent and doubled over across the few yards between the corner and the tractor.

Erin wanted to watch but knew her job was to try to suppress the incoming fire. She ripped off four aimed shots at the nearest barracks window, seeing gashes appear in the rusty shutter. She spun and pumped four more shots at the window above, where she could see the snout of a machine gun and hear its incessant chatter.

She heard a scream ahead and spun to see Eamon, carrying Cal in his arms, fall on the street, spilling Cal's limp body into the gutter. Bloodstains bloomed on his chest. “
Eamon. Eamon
.”

The machine gun clattered on. More shots were coming from God knew where. Erin clapped a hand over one ear and begged the racket to stop. She barely noticed a black station wagon speed past her up the hill road. McGuinness was running. The bastard hadn't tried to help.

She sobbed, fumbled for her white hanky, tied it to the muzzle of her rifle, and stepped out into the street, waving her pathetic flag of surrender. She tried to find some shelter in the lee of the tractor. “
Stop it. Stop it
,” she screamed up at the machine gunners. “
For the love of God, stop it
.”

She felt the thump of a bullet strike her thigh. There was no pain, but its force hurled her to the ground. She crawled ahead, dragging the leg behind her. “I'm coming, Cal. Hang on, Eamon.” The firing seemed to have slackened. She forced herself to her knees, made another yard, then collapsed facedown on Eamon's unmoving chest.

Her thigh throbbed and burned now, but suddenly there was quiet. The firing had stopped. From where she lay, she could see two uniformed policemen herding a group of civilians and two nuns along the T and away from the barracks. A third nun lay crumpled on the street, limbs awry, black habit and white wimple bloodstained. She looked like a shot magpie.

Erin struggled to get her back against the wheel of the tractor and stared up at the bucket above her head. The fuse had only minutes to run.

She tried to crawl away but was too weak. Blood had soaked her trouser leg, and a pool slowly spread on the tarmac. She looked into Eamon's milky eyes and at Cal's hands as they clutched empty air. And for Eamon and Cal, and for Ireland, because it wasn't for herself, she began to whisper, “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

*   *   *

Davy left the van in Lifford where he'd been told to and tucked into a corner of the vacant lot behind a wall, out of sight of the Gardai post on his side of the bridge. He'd ignored Eamon's instructions to stay with the van and crouched behind the wall to watch the bridge, wishing the black car would get a move on.

He heard birds bickering behind him and glanced over to where a huge chestnut spread its boughs over a field at the back of the lot. It grew on the banks of a stream he'd crossed on the outskirts of Lifford. The tree's branches were alive with a flock of jackdaws. Their cawing intensified as the birds exploded into the air. Davy could hear nothing but their strident shrieking. Something had frightened them.

He had to wait until their racket faded as they flew away before he could hear the distant clatter of automatic weapon fire. He'd heard enough in his time. The deeper note was a GPMG, and he'd never mistake the bark of a Heckler and Koch. It had always been his weapon of choice. Oh, Christ. They were all carrying ArmaLites. They must have run into trouble. Bad trouble, by the way the distant guns yammered and spat.

He craned round the corner, but all he could see was the bridge and the houses of Strabane. He strained to hear and was able to pick out the sharper cracks of an ArmaLite. At least one of the attack party was returning fire.

It took little imagination for him to picture the battle that must be raging round the barracks. His first thought was that McGuinness still held on to the passport, and if he'd been shot or taken, all Davy'd gone through would have been a waste of time.

He'd tried to tell them it was bloody madness to press ahead with this attack when they were so close to getting away. Damn them all. Damn that Erin, beautiful, spirited, in love with Eamon—and so bloody bound and determined to go ahead. Damn Eamon, even if he had been Davy's friend, a friend Davy knew he could have tried to forgive for roping him in, but whom he might never see again.

Davy looked at the bridge. Across the river, he could see Ulster Defence Regiment troops spilling from the customs shed, rifles held at the high port. They formed a cordon lining the approaches to the bridge.

Three men of the Gardai detachment on the Lifford side stood behind a red-and-white-striped barrier gazing toward the sound of gunfire that yammered to a crescendo, fell, then, after a few single shots, died.

The sudden silence was broken by the sounds of a black station wagon he could see approaching the bridge. Some of the attack party had got away. Perhaps some of them were in the car, wounded. Davy caught his breath as he waited for it to speed up and smash through the barrier, but it slowed as it neared the customs shed on the Northern side.

He saw soldiers of the Ulster Defence Regiment surround the station wagon. One stood in the middle of the road, hand held aloft, and the rest knelt, rifles pointed at the vehicle's windscreen. Shite, whoever was in it couldn't hope to shoot their way out. It was over. The car's occupants were fucked—and he'd never get his passport now.

The soldier in the middle of the road bent and seemed to be speaking in through the driver's window. Davy waited to see how many would get out, hands raised in surrender, but the soldier stood, stepped out of the way, and must have given an order to the covering troops, who lowered their weapons.

What the hell was going on?

The red-and-white-striped barrier swung up, and the wagon was driven slowly across the bridge, only to stop at the Gardai post as if it simply held a carload of tourists on an excursion to the Republic.

How they could be able to talk their way through was a mystery to Davy, but whatever was happening, his job was to get back to the van. He slipped from the corner and limped to where he had left the vehicle. The faint grating noises of gravel under his shoes were covered by the sounds of tires crunching toward him.

He spun to see the black wagon lurch into the lot. McGuinness was driving. Someone with blond hair sat in the passenger seat. There was no one else inside. Davy wondered if anyone could possibly have survived back in Strabane.